New York
CNN Business
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Instagram has a new leader.
On Monday, the company announced that Adam Mosseri will lead Instagram immediately. Last week, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced they were leaving the company.
“We are excited to hand over the reins to a product leader with a strong design background, a focus on craftsmanship and simplicity, and a deep understanding of the importance of community,” Systrom and Krieger said in a statement. ”
Mosseri joined Facebook, which owns Instagram, in 2008 and has held various positions at the company, including head of News Feed and director of Facebook mobile app design. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Product at Instagram. In his new role, Mosseri will oversee “all functions of the business” and will hire a new management team, including engineering, product and operations leaders.
Prior to their departures, Systrom served as CEO and Krieger served as chief technology officer.
The pair founded the photo-sharing app in 2010 in a coworking space. The app became a hit, attracting tens of millions of users, and the co-founders later sold it to Facebook (FB) for $1 billion in 2012.
With support from Facebook, Instagram continues to grow and add new features such as videos, disappearing posts, and most recently a long-form content hub called IGTV. According to Instagram, the app currently has more than 1 billion monthly active users.
While it’s not uncommon for founders to leave after a company is acquired, it’s worth noting that Systrom and Krieger stayed on for six years after Facebook acquired the company.
It’s unclear what the pair will do next. “We plan to take some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again…Creating something new requires us to take a step back, understand what motivates us, and put it into perspective,” Systrom said in a statement last week. It matches what the world needs;” and that’s what we plan to do. ”
Systrom and Krieger’s departures come less than six months after Jan Koum resigned as CEO of messaging platform WhatsApp. Facebook acquired the platform in 2014 for $19 billion.
WhatsApp’s other founder, Brian Acton, left Facebook in 2017. Earlier this year, he backed calls for people to delete Facebook after Cambridge Analytica accessed the data of millions of users without their knowledge.